Lead generation is the darling of the ROI crowd. It’s easy to quantify in a board room. It’s based on data, and direct lines can be drawn between leads and conversions.
But it’s not enough.
Lead generation needs a partner, and that partner is brand awareness.
Lead generation, put simply, is turning members of your target market into likely customers. They are nurtured along until they convert to being a customer. Brand awareness is the recognizability of your brand in your industry or market. Brand awareness is not always necessarily positive; as a result, companies create extensive strategies to create the right messaging around their brand.
Brand awareness is also about communicating what makes your brand special or unique, as well as messaging around what your company deems important and the ways you’ll deliver value to your customers.
Brand identity is also more than just familiarity. It’s about building trust and a bond between a company and its customers.
Generating leads without a recognizable brand turns you into an annoying salesman. You’re all about discounts, promotions, and noise. Your customers only spend their resources with you because of a particular deal, but since they aren’t sure what your brand is about, there’s little reason to stick around for any reason but the price.
Brand awareness gives you depth, it creates relationships between you and your customers and it helps them identify with your values. Your brand is a complex concept that includes not just your logo and color scheme. It’s about your values, your voice, and a certain look that is consistent across all of your images and videos.
You can think about brand awareness as how a lead experiences your brand. You may connect with a member of your target audience through a piece of content that demonstrates your expertise through a how-to video. Your leads may become aware that you share their commitment to volunteerism when you post on social media about your workday at the local women’s shelter repairing doors and painting trim.
Just as lead generation on its own tends to offer empty sales without future investment from a loyal customer, brand awareness on its own is not profitable. Your company won’t grow if everyone thinks you’re the greatest company, yet they never buy your products. The connections that take you from brand awareness to lead generation include techniques like including a compelling call to action with every social media post and blog or offering a great piece of content in exchange for an email address.
It’s easier to build a case around the ROI for lead generation, but that doesn’t disprove the value of brand awareness. To learn how to build a campaign rich in both, contact us at DirectMail.io.